Free The Taste of Night by Vicki Pettersson Page A

blue gaze on me.
    “You must be Cher,” he said, and before I could correct him, he reached forward and brought my hand to his lips. His mouth lingered over my knuckles as his eyes went dark and seductive. “Like mother, like daughter, I see.” And his tongue actually flashed out for a quick taste.
    My knuckles fisted instinctively. Suzanne might have a great ass, but she apparently had absolutely no asshole radar. Forcing a smile, I relaxed my hand and returned him Olivia’s most saccharine smile. “I’m Olivia, actually. Cher’s bestest-ever friend. And you must be Jeffrey. Suzanne’s told us all about you,” I said, dragging a now faltering Troy into the foyer. I shut the door and turned to him, pressing closer. “You simply must show me that thing you can do with your tongue. She’s been talking about it for weeks.”
    He was saved from having to answer—and I was saved from the assault of his cologne—by Suzanne’s arrival.
    “Troy, darling!” she said, sweeping in like a modern-day Scarlett descending the staircase at Tara. She was dressed in bejeweled sandals, white jeans, and a bright coral top showcasing the rest of her gravity-defying assets. Her light blondcurls had been swiftly pulled back in a style only confident older women could pull off, and not for the first time I wondered how old she really was. She looked anywhere from twenty-eight to forty-two, the high side fathomable only because Cher had told me she was “ages” older than us.
    Eyes glazed, Troy began spewing sexual pheromones so potent I got dizzy. Suzanne’s eight-mile-a-day runs must have paid off in ways never fathomed by a superhero. Or maybe it had something to do with that piercing I’d seen earlier.
    “I’m going to go check on Cher. You kids have fun,” I said, breathing shallowly, wanting to get out of there before Troy started humping her leg. Yet Cher appeared just then, looking like a newborn Bambi, legs not quite steady, but clearly determined.
    “Are you okay, baby?” Suzanne asked, rushing to her side.
    “You should sit down, Cher,” I said, doing the same. “Let me get you a cool washcloth or something.”
    Troy shook himself from his lust-saturated state. “What’s wrong with her?”
    “She was hit by a piece of lead,” I said. And who knew a number two could pack such a wallop?
    “Don’t worry, honey,” Suzanne said, drawing Cher across the room to a chenille-covered armchair. “You’ll be fine. Nothing a glass of wine won’t fix.”
    “I’ll get it,” I said quickly.
    As I headed to the bar tucked just around the corner, Troy started in on a story about how he’d once rescued a girlfriend from a homicidal rodeo clown who’d used the pro circuit to stalk women in five different states. I scooped some ice into a steel shaker and rolled my eyes. Taking care of innocents was rewarding, but sometimes it was also a pain in the ass. After all, innocent really meant human, and humans were flawed, capricious creatures, and sometimes downright mean. Taking down a rapist or molester was easily the best part of my job.
    The worst? Standing by, like now, and watching the petty slights, the sleazy intentions, and the domestic dramas…things we had no obligation, and indeed no right to interfere with. People had to make their own mistakes, but that didn’t make it any easier to stand aside and watch bad choices and shortsightedness play havoc with lives.
    “Here you go,” I said, returning to Cher with the cocktail. I offered an encouraging smile at her puzzled look. “Vodka instead of wine,” I told her, before lowering my voice to a whisper. “Fewer calories.”
    Cher teared up before accepting the drink with shaking hands. “I love you.”
     
    A quarter of an hour later Cher was revived enough to kneel with me in her mother’s hangar-sized closet, where we shoved aside enough evening gowns to supply Suzanne with a new car, if she wanted one. These disks, I thought, leaning back on my heels,